‘Mr. J,’ Brian said, letting out a heavy lung of air, his tone now a little anxious. Mr. J never called him at night. He never called him at home.

Brian Caldron wasn’t an LAPD detective. He wasn’t a police officer either. In fact, he could barely use a handgun. What he was, was a mega computer geek, a top analyst inside the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division, with a very high clearance level. A clearance level that gave him direct and unrestricted access to most national and local law-enforcement databases, and with that he was able to provide Mr. J with the most valuable commodity of the modern age – information.

‘I’m sorry for calling you at home,’ Mr. J said, ‘but I need a favor.’ As soon as that last word left his lips, Mr. J regretted it. It was never a favor, it was always business. The word ‘favor’ implied weakness. It implied that Mr. J would now be in Brian’s debt. He hoped Brian hadn’t picked up on it.

He hadn’t.

‘Can’t it wait until the morning?’ Brian asked.

‘No.’

Mr. J heard Brian take another deep breath. ‘So how can I help?’

‘A nine-one-one call was made to the LAPD not that long ago,’ Mr. J explained. ‘Probable homicide.’

Brian took down the address Mr. J gave him.

‘The first thing I need from you is – I need you to find out if the call was a hoax or not.’

For some reason, Mr. J was still holding on to a sliver of hope that all this could’ve been nothing more than some sort of sick prank.

‘OK,’ Brian replied. ‘And if it’s not a hoax?’

‘Then I need you to ghost this case twenty-four/seven. Everything, and I mean everything that gets logged regarding this investigation, I need to know.’ A short pause. ‘Is there any way you can get that confirmation from your place, or do you need to be back at headquarters?’

‘If confirmation is all you need right now,’ Brian said, ‘I can do it from here.’

‘OK. Let me know when you get it.’

Mr. J checked his speed again. He was still keeping to the speed limit.

Ring. Ring. Brian’s secret number popped up on the large screen display on Mr. J’s dashboard. He thumbed a button on his steering wheel and accepted the call.

‘Brian. So what do you have for me?’

‘The call was no hoax.’

Mr. J felt an invisible dagger penetrate his heart. His fingers began choking his steering wheel until his knuckles went white.

‘Female victim,’ Brian continued. ‘Forty-two years old. Her name is Cassandra Jenkinson.’

‘Any doubt about her identity?’ Mr. J asked. His hope was now just fantasy.

‘Not according to the team at the scene. Official identification is just a matter of protocol. The victim’s driver’s license was found inside her handbag.’

The invisible dagger dug deeper into Mr. J’s heart. He could feel it lacerating everything inside of him.

‘Have they found her cellphone?’ Mr. J asked. Once again his voice was as cold and as emotionless as ever.

‘Cellphone? That I won’t know until a manifesto is logged into the system. Hopefully in the morning.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Mr. J thought. He would find that out before Brian could anyway.

‘She was married to . . .’ Brian tried to move on, but Mr. J cut him short.

‘It’s OK. For now this was everything I needed.’ A short pause. ‘Now. As I’ve told you, I need everything about this investigation ghosted. Same format as always. Same untraceable email as always. Any new discoveries you deem important, call me on this number ASAP. If I need any other information, I’ll be in touch.’

The call disconnected.

Mr. J peeked at the speedometer one more time. Seventy miles an hour just wouldn’t do. His Cadillac CTS-V went from zero to sixty in 3.7 seconds. It packed a 6.2-liter supercharged V8 engine under the hood, with a top speed of two hundred miles an hour. It was also equipped with a state of the art radar detector that could pick up a speed gun or camera from a mile away. The car was, without a shadow of a doubt, a super sedan. It was time to put all that power into use.

Fifty

By 2:00 a.m., Hunter, Garcia and Dr. Slater were just finishing up at the crime scene. In accordance to protocol, after being photographed and documented from all possible angles in relation to the location and position in which she’d been found, Cassandra Jenkinson’s body had finally been taken to the coroner’s office. The heavy rain that had started falling as they arrived had continued for over an hour, washing away any potential clues, including footprints that the killer might’ve left behind as he either approached or left the grounds of the house. Thanks to his quick work, the agent in charge of the driveway had succeeded in preserving the partial tire track he had come across earlier. After the rain had stopped, he had managed to lift an impression of it using a gelatin lifter – a sheet of rubber with a low-adhesive gelatin layer on one side that can lift prints from almost anywhere, including porous, rough, curved and textured surfaces.

‘Any luck?’ Garcia asked Nicholas Holden, who for the past two hours had been dusting doors, windows, and all relevant indoor surfaces and objects.

‘Depends on what you call luck,’ he replied with a shrug, as he finished packing up his equipment.

Garcia enquired with a subtle eyebrow raise.

‘How many people in this household?’ Holden asked almost rhetorically, as he’d seen plenty of pictures throughout the house.

‘The victim and her husband,’ Garcia replied.

‘No one else?’ The question was dusted with a little surprise.

‘Not according to the info we got.’ Garcia paused, thought about it, then rephrased. ‘Well, they’ve got a twenty-year-old son, but he doesn’t live here anymore. He goes to college in Boston. Why?’

Holden nodded as if that information explained a lot.

‘From a simple pattern comparison, I can tell you that I’ve retrieved three different sets of fingerprints,’ he explained. ‘One of them belongs to the victim herself. The other two are undoubtedly male. Of those, one reoccurs prominently all throughout the house – kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, living room, hallway . . . it’s everywhere. The second set doesn’t show up as much as the first one, but it still reoccurs frequently enough to suggest that neither of them belong to a stranger to this household.’

Garcia scratched his chin. ‘The husband and the son.’

Holden agreed with a head movement. He had just finished zipping up his bag when they all heard a loud commotion coming from outside the front door. Before anyone was able to react, a tall and well-built man with a shaved head pushed his way into the living room. The look on his face was a mixture of fear and bewilderment. Two angry officers followed him inside.

‘Sir,’ one of the officers said, hastily reaching for the man’s arm. ‘This is still an open crime scene and you’re contaminating it. I’m going to have to ask you to step outside.’

The man jerked his arm away from the officer’s grip.

‘It’s OK,’ Hunter said, turning to face them and signaling the officers to let the man go. He didn’t have to ask. He recognized the man from the pictures on the mantelpiece. ‘We’re all done here, right?’ He looked at Dr. Slater.

She nodded in response. ‘We’ve collected everything we needed. There’s no more risk of contamination.’

The officers looked at each other before nodding back at Hunter and exiting the house.

‘Where is she?’ Mr. J asked in an unsteady voice, his crazed eyes searching the entire room.

Hunter stepped forward to meet him. ‘Mr. Jenkinson, I’m Detective Robert Hunter with the LA—’

‘Where’s my wife?’ Mr. J cut Hunter short. His gaze moved past the detective to first find the lone dining chair by the east wall then the pool of blood underneath it. His wife’s blood. For a moment, he stopped breathing.